Wii U, its the new _____________

Am very surprised, would have thought I would be flamed for drawing the comparison. Regardless I wanted to point out that NOT BUYING an Xbox due to Microsoft branding is just as short sighted as buying a Nintendo machine because it has the racetrack logo on it.

It will have a hard time finding wide acceptance based on a report that it will not play blu ray or dvd.
Nintendo argues that they need to cut costs on all machines sold.

So this tells us:

1. The console will have proprietary media (again) or simply will lack the codecs needed to play blu ray...
2. The machine is about as powerful as current gen hardware, because why else would Nintendo care to scrutinize costs. A much more powerful machine would justify a $50 or $100 more price vs ps3 and 360

business wise Nintendo sees the ps4 and next Xbox at $400 or more, which means consumers may accept hardware at $250 by then but if you say to the 2012 Christmas shopper "here's the established 360 with 100s of games, dvd support, kinetic out of the box and Xbox Live.. It's $300.00 and here is a wii u. It has one original wii u game and a bunch of third party that's on the 360 already... And here's the ps3 which is a blu ray player for only $250.00.."

its an uphill battle for certain.

 

Who cares if it plays DVDs or not? Everyone at this point has at least one and probably two things that can play DVDs. Who even watches DVDs in 2012?

 

About the graphics:

Nobody has yet to confirm the graphics ability of the WiiU.

There have been rumors circulating for the past few days:
One 'anonymous' dev said it was weaker than the current gen.
One said it had the same amount of RAM of the current gen and was therefore equal.
Many have said that it is more powerful than the current gen, although the exact numbers they give vary.

Who knows for sure? Even Nintendo had a small press release that said they weren't going to confirm or deny anything.

As for blu-ray, that's been a failure. I don't know a single person with a blu-ry player. The adoption rate is horrible and online streaming is taking over(which even the current wii has).
I have no desire for a DRM shackled, prone to scratching, requires a certified display, aging format.
I have 2 WDTV's and I just get everything in MKV and don't deal with discs anymore.

Blu-ray is less of a selling point now than in 2006.

About hating MS products, I have to agree that I would never buy an MS product. I have used Linux exclusively since 2007. I think that the price for their OS, the OS in general, and their rather shady business practices preclude them from my list of possible consoles.

Remember all the 3DS doom and gloom and the Vita praise?
The Vita outsold the 3DS for exactly one week. Its first week.
Since then, the Wii has been outselling the Vita. Yeah. The wii.

Everything is up in the air. To start these threads now is pretty much a waste. We know nothing of the console or to the consumer's reaction to it.
Will it succeed? I don't know.
Either way, will it be Nintendo's last console? No.

 

3DS 234,109 (+11%) 16,927,303
PS3 147,356 (0%) 62,919,465
X360 106,837 (-2%) 65,637,109
Wii 74,605 (-3%) 95,489,592
PSV 71,155 (-8%) 1,735,785

That's current week, percent change since last week and life to date.

 

Yeah, I thought the Vita didn't have much praise. I entered a contest to win one and there were no entries just days before launch. I got it, and not a soul knew what the hell it was.
And, I agree with Paul, Blu-Ray isn't a selling point for me. I've never bought a single DVD or Blu-Ray movie in my life, nor do I plan to. Physical media is large and takes up too much space. Not to mention it can easily be ruined by scratches, and your investment goes out the window.
However, I like games on optical media. Not sure why, I just do. maybe it's because I know I'll use them more than once when compared with movies.

 

The quality of streaming media is horrible and will probably never be anywhere near Blu-Ray standards. Although Blu-Ray has been quite slow to catch on, I think it'll survive for those who actually want to watch movies with good image quality on physical media, while DVD has got to die soon under the pressure of streaming media, since people who still buy DVDs probably don't care about image quality and might as well watch streamed movies because of the convenience.

 

I'm not streaming my media though...:excitement:

 

More people than your realize. Most DVD players now upscale and in many cases I can't tell the difference between an Upscaled DVD and BluRay.

 

I just wonder if lightning will strike twice for the Wii series of systems.

My bet is it won't do nearly as well as the first system. And it seems like nintendo isn't going to have quite the headstart they were looking for.

-adrianc

 

The Dreamcast had a 2 year head start and we all know how that turned out

 

I would like if the Wii U became a success. Not sure if they can pull it off this time though, the whole concept seems kind of quirky and not as accessible to casual gamers as the Wii. But without the dull casual gamer audience as a cushion this could turn out problematic.

The quality ultimately depends on the age of the movie, the original master, the restoration process and your equipment.
Old movies on BluRay are usually not that impressive compared to the upscaled DVD version. But if you watch something like Avatar in 1080p it's like night and day compared to the, yet very good, DVD version.

 

The Majority of the things I watch are Anime and older kung fu movies. My DVD player upscales up to 1080i but set to 720p (it's a 30 inch TV) and the other player does 1080p upscaled (that hooked up to a 40 inch LCD) I'll probably cave eventually and get a Blu Ray player though But
I doubt it'll be anytime soon esp if HVD is still on the Horizion.

 

x

 

Well Nintendo is alienating alot of people..........so we're half way there.

 

Yeah, "on the horizon" as in 10 years or so. If you have a TV with a maximum resolution of 1080p, having a format with a huge storage capability (bigger than Bluray) wouldn't help much. You can't really do much better 1080p video than Bluray does, except that it could be uncompressed. But if you can barely tell the difference between a Bluray and a DVD, there's no way you could tell the difference between compressed and uncompressed.

HVD has the potential of storing 4K video, but that's way off from being a viable product. There are a few TVs that support 4K, but they're extremely expensive. If you think about how long it took for HDTV to catch on, and how little interest there seems to be in 4K, you can bet it's probably going to be a long time before 4K catches on, if at all. I also think that by the time that happens, if it happens, we'll probably have finished the transition from physical media to digital downloads.

 

Bear in my mind my man that I still want to invest in a Laser disc player

I think DVD will still be around in a few years time def when HVD hits.
I don't know though. I'll upgrade when I'm forced to.

 

While not a selling point it is to me Nintendo being rather stubborn and luddite like the fact that they aren't including it.

Like it or not we are a generation away from a streaming marketplace, and I really see no reason to omit it.

Heck even Microsoft is going to use it on the next Xbox. That says a lot of how far and wide it has been accepted.

I dare stereotype the user who only has a wii as potentially someone who doesn't care about hd but will be getting into hd so long as Nintendo does.

The stats claim somewhere of up to 70% of hdtv owners using sd only signals out of ignorance.

I imagine once that user sees what hd does via their wiiu they will be disappointed at a lack of blu ray, but by then Nintendo has made the sale so I suppose it becomes a moot point.

 

Plus might I add how naughty dog cited lack of blu ray as a reason uncharted would not be possible on a standard dvd Xbox platform?

But heck maybe Nintendo is using holographic disc. They did partner with a now defunct company some time ago.

LOL. Made myself laugh there.

 

x